His voice was bitter. “Don’t ask useless questions.”

She turned her face back to the window. The pavement had disappeared under a horde of black umbrellas.

Even inside the carriage she felt the incipient chill. Summer would end early this year.


A short time later Christian finished his last term at Harrow and went on to read the Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge. The summer after his second year at Trinity College, he took part in a dig in Germany. On his way back to Algernon House, he stopped in London to inspect a new shipment of marine fossils at the British Museum’s natural history division, fossils that would not be available for public viewing for some months.

The discussion engendered by the new fossils was most stimulating, so much so that instead of continuing on with his journey home, Christian accepted an invitation to dine with the curator and several of his colleagues. Afterward, rather than retiring immediately to his town residence, where a small staff kept the house ready for his use should he require it, he decided to while away an hour at his club. Society had departed London at the end of the Season; he could expect to be largely undisturbed.

The club was indeed quite empty. With a glass of brandy by his side, he settled in and tried to read the Times.

The days were easier. Between his course work, his estate, and his friends, Christian’s hours were fully occupied. But at night, when the world quieted and he was alone with his thoughts, his mind turned all too often to the woman who’d pickpocketed his heart without so much as a glance.

He dreamed of her. Sometimes the dreams were lurid, her naked, lithe body under his, her lips whispering lecherous words of encouragement into his ears. Other times she remained resolutely out of reach, walking away while he was rooted to the ground, or coming to stand next to him just after he’d been turned into a stone statue. He would struggle and shout inside his marble confines, but she took no notice at all, as uncaring as she was lovely.

Someone entered the dark-paneled library. Christian recognized the man instantly: Anthony Townsend. Her husband.

The years since his encounter with Mrs. Townsend had been a long tutorial in the frailer aspects of humanity. Until he’d met her, he’d not known envy, misery, or despair. Nor guilt, which pulsed through his veins at the sight of Townsend.

He’d never wished the man ill—and rarely ever thought of him as anything but an immovable object. But he’d lain with the man’s wife countless times in his mind. And if something were to befall Townsend, he’d be the first in line for an introduction to his widow.

Those were cause enough for Christian to drain his brandy and lay aside the paper, still crisp from its ironing. He rose to leave.

“I’ve seen you before,” Townsend said.

After a moment of paralysis, Christian said coldly, “I do not believe we have met.”

He did not quite share his ancestors’ reverence for the family heritage, but he was as unapproachable as any de Montfort who ever breathed.

Townsend, however, was undaunted. “I didn’t say we’ve met, but I know your face from somewhere. Yes, I remember now. Lord’s Cricket Ground, two years ago. You were in a Harrow striped cap, gawking at my wife.”

Christian’s reflection in a window, a stark etching of light against the dimness of the street beyond, showed a man stunned into stillness, as if he’d stared directly into Medusa’s face.

“I can’t remember what my maids look like, but I remember the faces of all the men who salivate after my wife.” Townsend’s tone was strangely listless, as if he was beyond caring.

Christian’s face burned, but he remained silent: No matter how vulgar it was to discuss one’s wife in this manner—and berate those who coveted her—Townsend was within his rights.

“You remind me of someone,” Townsend went on. “Are you related to the late Duke of Lexington?”

If Christian admitted his identity, would Townsend blacken his name before the missus? He watched his lips move in the window. “The late duke was my father.”

“Yes, of course. You’d be Lexington, then. She’d be thrilled to know that someone with your exalted stature considers her a prize.” Townsend chortled, a dry, humorless sound. “You may yet have your wish, Your Grace. But think twice. Or you may end up like me.”

This time Christian could not help his scorn. “Speaking to strangers about my wife, you mean? I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t think I’d be the sort, either,” Townsend shrugged. “Forgive me, sir, for detaining you with my unmanly bleating.”

He bowed. Christian returned a curt nod.

It was not until the next day that he wondered what Townsend had meant by “you may yet have your wish.”


Townsend’s obituary was in the paper within the week. Shocked, Christian made inquiries and learned that Townsend had been on the verge of bankruptcy. Moreover, he owed massive amounts to jewelers both in London and on the Continent. Had he been driven to accumulate those debts to keep his wife happy, so that her gaze would not stray to overeager admirers ready to step in with lavish gifts for her favors?

A year and a day after his death, Mrs. Townsend married again—a scandalously early remarriage when the regulation mourning period was two years. Her new husband, a Mr. Easterbrook, was a wealthy man thirty years her senior. Soon came rumors of a rampant affair she conducted right under Mr. Easterbrook’s nose, with one of his best friends, no less.

Evidently Christian’s beloved was a shallow, greedy, selfish woman who injured and diminished those around her.

He forced himself to accept the truth.

It was not terribly difficult to avoid her. He did not move in the same circles as she, did not attend the London Season, and did not follow the fashionable calendar of events. Therefore he should not have run into her coming out of the Waterhouse Building on Cromwell Road, which housed the British Museum’s natural history collections.

Almost five years had elapsed since he last saw her. The passage of time had only enhanced her beauty. She was more radiant, more magnetic, and more dangerous than ever.

A wildfire raged in his heart. It didn’t matter what kind of woman she was; it only mattered that she become his.

He turned and walked away.

CHAPTER 1

Cambridge, Massachusetts

1896


The ichthyosaur skeleton at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology was incomplete. But the fish lizard was one of the first to be found on American soil, in the state of Wyoming, and the American university was understandably eager to put it on exhibit.

Venetia Fitzhugh Townsend Easterbrook stepped closer to look at its tiny teeth, resembling the blade of a serrated bread knife, which indicated a diet of soft-bodied marine organism. Squid, perhaps, which had been abundant in the Triassic seas. She examined the minuscule bones of its flappers, fitted together like rows of kernels on the cob. She counted its many rib bones, long and thin like the teeth of a curved comb.

Now that this semblance of scientific scrutiny had been performed, she allowed herself to step back and take in the creature’s length, twelve feet from end to end, even with much of its tail missing. She would not lie. It was always the size of these prehistoric beasts that most enthralled her.

“I told you she’d be here,” said a familiar voice that belonged to Venetia’s younger sister, Helena.

“And right you are,” said Millie, the wife of their brother, Fitz.

Venetia turned around. Helena stood five feet eleven inches in her stockings. As if that weren’t attention-grabbing enough, she also had red hair, the most magnificent head of it since Good Queen Bess, and malachite green eyes. Millie, at five feet three inches, with brown hair and brown eyes, disappeared easily into a crowd—though that was a mistake on the part of the crowd, as Millie was delicately pretty and much more interesting than she let on.

Venetia smiled. “Did you find interviewing the parents fruitful, my dears?”

“Somewhat,” answered Helena.

The upcoming graduating class of Radcliffe, a women’s college affiliated with Harvard University, would be the first to have the Harvard president’s signature on their diplomas—a privilege roundly denied their English counterparts at Lady Margaret Hall and Girton. Helena was on hand to write about the young ladies of this historic batch for the Queen magazine. Venetia and Millie had come along as her chaperones.

On the surface, Helena, an accomplished young woman who had studied at Lady Margaret Hall and currently owned a small but thriving publishing firm, seemed the perfect author for such an article. In reality, she had vehemently resisted the assignment.

But her family had evidence that Helena, an unmarried woman, was conducting a potentially ruinous affair. This presented quite a quandary. Helena, at twenty-seven, had not only come of age long ago, but had also come into her inheritance—in other words, too old and too financially independent to be coerced into more decorous conduct.

Venetia, Fitz, and Millie had agonized over what to do to protect this beloved sister. In the end, they’d decided to remove Helena from the source of temptation without ever mentioning their reasons, in the hope that she’d come to her senses when she’d had some time to reflect upon her choices.

Venetia had all but bribed the editor of the Queen to offer the American assignment to Helena, then proceeded to wear down Helena’s opposition to leaving England. They’d arrived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the beginning of the spring term. Since then, Venetia and Millie had kept Helena busy with round after round of interviews, class visits, and curriculum studies.